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Isaiah 40:1-11 Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins. 3 A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5 Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” 6 A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. 9 Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings;1 lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” 10 See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. 11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.
Mark 1:1-8 The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; 3 the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'” 4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7 He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
The Coming Deliverer
The first verse in Mark sums up what Advent is all about. It’s the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. We celebrate the first coming of Jesus which marked the beginning of the kingdom of God on earth and we look forward to the second coming of Christ when that kingdom will be fulfilled. Mark quotes Isaiah 40 which had long been considered to point to the messiah. The words of the prophet Isaiah are familiar to us and they would have been familiar to those who heard Mark’s gospel.
The first thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah are filled with warnings of judgment and exile that would come if the Jewish people would not repent. Isaiah prophesized that the people in Judah would be punished for their continuing sin. They would become exiles in a foreign land.
Mark points us to the words in Isaiah that tell of a voice that cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God”. Then Mark tells us about John the Baptist who appeared in the wilderness, obviously linking the two. John the Baptist tells the people that one more powerful than him is coming who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit. The one John is speaking of is Jesus Christ.
Often prophetic text speaks to several times. Isaiah first spoke to the people after King Uzziah died and told them God would punish them for their sins. He predicted that the people would be taken in captivity to Babylon but that God would one day bring them back from Babylon. They did come back to Jerusalem but were not an independent country, they were not free to worship as they chose. The people awaited a messiah who would come and deliver them from their oppressors. Isaiah’s words weren’t just about the captivity in Babylon. He also spoke into the future and predicted the coming of the Messiah.
Next Sunday, December 14th, the Jewish festival of Hanukah begins. It celebrates something that occurred about two hundred years before Jesus’ birth. The Jewish people were oppressed by the Syrian Greek king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. He outlawed their religion, forbid circumcision and forced them to offer sacrifices to Greek gods. In 168 BC his soldiers massacred thousands of people and desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem by erecting an altar to Zeus and sacrificing pigs there. The Jewish priest Mattahias and his five sons led a rebellion against the Greeks. Mattahias was killed and his son Judah Maccabee took over. Within two years these fighters, known as Maccabees drove the Greeks out of Jerusalem. They rededicated the temple to God but there was only enough untainted olive oil to keep the flame burning for one day. The miracle of Hanukah is that the flame continued burning for eight days until more oil could be obtained. Unfortunately; the victory of the Maccabees over their oppressors was not to last. They won their freedom to practice their religion freely but it was not a freedom that lasted. The Romans soon replaced the Greeks as the oppressors.
At the time Jesus was born the Jewish people still suffered under the tyranny of the Romans. They longed for the Messiah to come and deliver them from oppression. The people of that time had a narrow view of oppression though. They only thought of oppression as coming from outside forces. They wanted the Assyrians defeated, then the Greeks, then the Romans. They weren’t aware of the inner oppression that we are all subject to, the oppression that comes from sin.
The only true, permanent freedom comes to us from Jesus Christ, the One whose birth we will soon celebrate. Just as the Jewish people were delivered from captivity in Babylon so are we delivered from captivity to sin by Jesus Christ. .Jesus delivers us from sin and death. He delivers us from darkness because Jesus is the light in our darkness. Jesus is our deliverer; He came to free us from the bonds of sin and death. We are freed by grace.
The Jewish people remember many deliverers sent by God. Moses led them out of Egypt. David saved them from the Philistines. Nehemiah brought people back from Babylon and rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem. The Macabees drove out the Greeks. Rescue from worldly oppressors is not enough though. God Himself came to us in His Son, Jesus to permanently rescue us from ourselves, from our sin.
In a certain sense, we, too are exiles. We are exiled not in a foreign country but we are exiled from God’s presence because of our sin. When Jesus frees us from our sins He doesn’t just forgive us for the sins of the past or the sins we confess. Jesus forgives all our sins even those that we will commit in the future. Jesus is not bound by time or space. Jesus knows all about us, He knows the ways we will sin before we even do it. We are not to live in fear that we will forget to confess a sin and because of it not get into heaven. That would be trusting in ourselves for salvation. “Oh, if only I remember every sin and ask forgiveness then I will go to heaven.” Wrong! We rely on God’s grace alone which we receive through faith alone and that too is a gift from God. Jesus earned our salvation when He died on the cross and rose again victorious over death. There is nothing we can do to earn God’s forgiveness. God’s grace is far more magnanimous than that. We don’t earn it, it it’s a free gift. As Paul said in Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant revolution, didn’t understand this. He was convinced he had to earn his salvation. He constantly went to confession but never felt assured of his salvation. He didn’t know Jesus as a Deliverer, only as a Judge. He finally found that assurance in the book of Romans. In it Paul talks about the righteousness of God. Martin Luther had interpreted that to mean that God was a righteous judge demanding perfection from human beings. The turning point for Luther was when he realized that righteousness was not something he needed to earn but was a gift of God’s grace.
Repentance and sorrow for our sins comes from God who convicts us through the Holy Spirit. Guilt over sin and despair, fears about our salvation, these come from Satan. Martin Luther said, “So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: “I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!”
So how is it that we are bound by sin? For that we look back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve gave in to Satan’s temptation. Many think their sin was to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree and that is true but the greater sin was why they ate the fruit. God had provided them with everything. A beautiful place to live, a purpose for their lives, to tend the garden but when they listened to Satan in the guise of the serpent they stopped trusting God. That is the root of all our sin, when we stop trusting God and rely on ourselves. Martin Luther said, “The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ and must take matters into our own hands.” All of us are captive to sin without any ability to free ourselves. We are in desperate need of a deliverer. Jesus Christ is the one who delivers us.
Today we lit the Advent candle of peace. The only way to true peace comes through Jesus Christ. Our world is in turmoil, fear is rampant. For the last 10 years the top fear among Americans is the fear of corrupt government officials and it doesn’t matter which political party you are, the fear is the same. Fear of loved ones becoming ill is number 2. Number 3 is fear of economic financial collapse. This is a fear that has greatly increased as the economy has weakened. This fear moved up to number 3 even though last year it was 15. There is fear of war, fear of nuclear weapons, fear of cyber-terrorism. World peace will probably not come until Christ returns but inner peace is ours through faith in Jesus Christ as our deliverer and trust in God.
One this second Sunday of Advent we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. On the night of His arrest Jesus told His disciples to remember Him in the eating of the bread and the drinking of the wine. Part of the words of institution in the communion service says “This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He took our punishment for us. Because He died we are forgiven. Because He died we are set free. Because He died we are delivered from sin and death. Jesus Christ is our deliverer. Come Lord Jesus.